Hypocrite Lammy was first one to critically rant about previous riots in London

Labour's London mayoral hopeful David Lammy thinks after 2011's riots we could see more on the horizon

There could be a repeat of the 2011 riots unless more is done to tackle inequality, a senior
MP has warned.

David Lammy , who wants to be Labour’s candidate for London mayor in 2016, said the disillusioned young must get “hope and opportunity”.
The ex-minister blamed the riots three years ago on a “Grand Theft Auto” culture glamourising violence and a “fixation on the brands we wear, not who we are and what we achieve.”
He said “undercurrents” which led to the unrest are still there and affect not just young black people, but alienated white working class men and members of the Muslim community.

Mr Lammy said today’s generation does not have the same opportunity he or his parents had when they arrived from Guyana in the 1950s. He said: “I am running because I want to talk about that and I want a London for all Londoners.”
The barrister insisted Britain has “tremendous problems.” He went on: “One in four young people in London are unemployed, you have falling wages, people unable to get on the housing ladder and facing rising rents. It’s easy and crude to blame these problems on immigrants.”
He wants a living wage, more action on house building and capped rents.

Mr Lammy, 42, who is married with three young children, contrasts his upbringing in Tottenham, North London, with the future of young people in the capital today.
His parents were among those who came from the Caribbean after the Second World War.
Raised by his hard-up mother after his parents split, Mr Lammy said it was still possible for him to get ahead with hard work. He added: “It’s a real struggle now to be without assets and on the minimum wage.”

THE New Era housing estate scandal in Dalston, east London, tells a poignant and tragic story about how Victorian philanthropic ideals have been transformed into commercial assets in the international market with not a shred of concern about the human consequences.

Arthur Barsht, the man who built this 93-flat estate, must be turning in his grave.
It was preserved for more than 80 years by the Lever family, who ran the estate as a place where low-income workers in teaching, health and construction could live near where they worked.
Now the grandson of the founder, who lives in a five-bedroom detached house in Northwood, Middlesex, has announced that the family is to sell up to a US private equity company which intends to quadruple the £600-a-month rents for a two-bed flat to £2,400.

The US company was assisted in the takeover of the estate by Richard Benyon, the Tory MP whose multimillion-pound family estate in extensive parkland near London was a partner to the deal.
None of the tenants will remotely be able to afford the new sky-high rents and they will all be evicted before Christmas. Welcome to Cameronian capitalism.
The whole Tory aim of squeezing public services, ostensibly to pay down the deficit - which is actually rising this year - is to restructure a public welfare state as a fully privatised market system.

The New Era estate is just one of thousands of initiatives designed to achieve this end, though a strongly redolent one.
The callousness of this nakedly monetary transaction is shown by the fact that nobody from the London office of the US private equity firm Westbrook has even deigned to visit the estate and talk to the residents, all of whom will be abruptly made homeless within the next three weeks.
It is purely a financialised arrangement transforming a tight-knit community into a global investment.

So why wasn't this outrage stopped? Because the families will have been evicted from private properties on private land, Hackney Council will have no responsibility to rehouse them.
They will be forced to leave London, but wherever they end up the public taxpayer, not Westbrook, will have to pay the cost of their accommodation.
It is ironic that Westbrook invests money from US public and private pension funds, endowments and foundations, including investments from many lower-paid workers similar to those now about to be evicted.

It is also resonant that Westbrook Partners has been taken to court for its shabby, vermin-ridden, unrepaired housing complexes in New York and been forced to carry out basic repairs and compensate their tenants.
In the light of this revelation of the new Tory Britain - which former Tory housing minister Grant Shapps hailed as a model for private landlords who are "the unsung heroes of the housing market" - Labour should bring in legislation to require local authorities to be offered first rights to take over all such estates being sold, with reserve rights of compulsory purchase where necessary to protect tenants.